


A Day of Easy Wind

by Rysler



Category: Batman (Comics), Gotham Central
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-05
Updated: 2010-06-05
Packaged: 2017-10-09 22:28:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/92278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rysler/pseuds/Rysler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Batwoman and The Question team up for a mission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Day of Easy Wind

Kate tugged her leather gloves onto her hands, grateful for their protection against the cold. Snow fell around her. Her oilskin pants and heavy snow boots ensured she wouldn't feel much of it. Unless Renee dumped some on the back of her neck.

She considered putting on the mask. She'd sweat inside it.

Renee met her by the car. The faded black turtleneck and the worn, ratty scarf made her look cold.

Kate wished she could do something.

"Hi," she said.

Hi, I love you. Let's forget this thing where we could both get killed and go back home and get into the hot tub. If you want to help people we'll open a hospice. A soup kitchen. A rehab center. Not this.

Please not this.

Renee gave her a faint smile. Then she turned to unload the trunk. "Thanks for bringing this."

"Sure? How'd you get here?"

Renee shrugged. Kate studied her back. The trench coat, too thin, revealed the sharp angles of Renee's body. No bulge out of place. She'd given up the gun when she'd taken over for Charlie. Part of that Buddhist superhero bullshit.

Part of not blowing a guy's head off, then blowing some little girl's off, instead.

Kate worried.

Renee shouldered a pack and they set off through the snow, leaving footprints. Kate breathed in deeply. She got her bearings. The New York mountains might as well be the middle of nowhere, beyond the ski resorts, not close enough to Canada to be interesting. Kate hated it. Even coming up here as a kid, she'd hated it. She'd rather have played stickball in the street.

"Most human traffickers, mafia, cartels," Renee said, "Like cities. At least for business. Easier to move around. Closer to the banks and the planes and the trains. Leave the city and you're all alone. Not even a cell tower. What kind of punk could live without a cell tower?"

"Us," Kate groused.

Renee snorted.

"Are we under surveillance?" Kate asked.

"Sure. Satellites. Tracks in the snow. Maybe some perimeter alerts. But no one is watching."

Kate glanced around.

"This is just a graveyard." Renee pulled her scarf over her mouth. Kate knew she hated the snow.

"Why out here?"

"They can bury them out here. Or put them in a wood chipper. Whatever. No one will see. Or smell. It's easier to transport a live person."

Renee's inflection was flat and clipped. She didn't talk like a cop anymore. The short words had lost the thicker, guttural cadence of the streets they once had. Now it was all about the information. Not letting it slip out. Not sharing.

The Question waited for answers; she didn't give them.

"How long do you think a teenager lasts in a sex den? Six months?"

"I've heard that," Kate said. She knew Renee believed it. Some fact she pulled out of the chaotic, democratic Internet.

"I think afterwards, they come here," Renee said.

"You think?"

"We'll see."

"Renee. How long will it take us to see?"

"Today."

"Okay."

"Maybe tonight," Renee said.

Kate rolled her eyes.

They crunched through the snow for a while, before the urge to reason with her partner overruled her senses. The cold was getting to her.

"Stranger danger isn't really my priority. It's too small a percentage."

"What's your priority?" Renee asked. She said it more like an accusation than a question.

"Systemic poverty. The fear that drives it. The--" She hesitated.

"Paranoia," Renee finished. She rolled the words around on her tongue. "Systemic poverty leads to hard to get the kids vaccinated, even for free, because the government's evil and full of poison, because it's easier to kill the miscreants than raise them up. Which leads to disease, infant mortality, malnutrition, missed days of school. And that's just one factor. Education, or religion, or--"

"Right," Kate said. "Pick anything. Pick this, Renee. Here I am in the fucking snow, outside of my city, where one in five families is dealing with sexual abuse. More than that with the plain old hitting. We should be hitting back. We should both be home."

"Read that in a book, did you? At boarding school?"

"You're the detective. Tell me I'm wrong."

"I walked the streets."

"And I do that now."

"Liberal guilt?"

"Boredom."

Renee smiled.

Kate folded her arms.

Renee shook her head and said, "The kids get abused. They run away. They get abused on the street. They get picked up. They get abused at their new home."

"Or die of a drug overdose."

"Always with the drugs. Not just heroin. Prozac and lithium and chloroform and morphine. People could deal with the world's worst blow job if they weren't chemically compromised, too."

"Speaking from experience?"

"I'm saying they have a right to be paranoid. Everyone should be."

Kate didn't say anything.

"Now you know why I had to leave."

Kate imagined Renee in Mexican jungles, in Malaysian beaches, on Russian trains. She caught Renee's arm and pulled her around.

"You can't do it alone," Kate said.

"I know."

Kate hugged her. Renee's cheek was against hers. Her hand was in Renee's hair. Renee's hands pressed against her back. Then they were two women kissing in the woods, unseen by an uninterested world, and Kate wanted to cry even as Renee caressed her mouth, because this moment was all she wanted.

Just when Renee's hand was teasing the edge of her shirt, slipping fingers between the buttons, she pulled back.

"We need to be ready," Renee said.

Kate pursed her swollen lips.

They walked up the crest of the hill, and beyond it stood a shack. Kate could smell the blood. Her eyes watered.

"Gross," Renee said.

"Understatement of the year."

After adding their own surveillance equipment to the perimeter, they went inside the shack. There was electricity and a satellite dish. Beer in the fridge. Kate saw a hookup for a laptop.

"Should we contact Oracle?"

Renee scoffed.

"All right."

Truck noise came from over the ridge.

"Are we killing them?" Kate asked.

"Of course not."

"Always good to have ground rules. Are they going to die?"

"Probably. But not today. We'll leave them here once we get what we need."

"What do we need?"

But there was no answer, and when Kate turned around, Renee was gone.

Kate sighed, put on her mask, and, as there were no rafters, ducked against the wall next to the door. Opposite the hinges. She'd learned that the hard way.

She knew her part. She was the opener, Renee was the closer. Whatever heads got busted; got busted. Maybe afterwards Renee would let her wash the blood off her knuckles with melted snow. They could ride back together in Kate's SUV.

Keys rattled in the door.

Kate tensed.

The door opened and first through was a hooded figure. A man--a boy, maybe nineteen--a head shorter than her, thin in a white tee shirt, his hands tied behind his back. He grunted as he was kicked and stumbled, bumping into the table.

Behind him came two men--just two, for one boy?--talking: "The woman got away."

"We'll go after her later. Where can she go?"

"Why do we have to, Jerry? Let her starve."

"Good point. We'll do the kid and get out of here. Fuck it all, Pie. I hate this place. Pizza doesn't even deliver."

Kate liked to wait for the evidence and catch them in the act. She didn't want to attack anyone without cause. She wasn't the police, after all. Vigilantes couldn't just pummel faces.

Being wrong cost too much.

But the boy was on his knees already, and he was shivering with the cold coming through the door, and Kate gave into the beast inside her, the rage that had started with Renee's phone call, since before that, and stepped into the open doorway.

The men were in front of her in the shadows of the shack. The wide open world, behind her, glowed white. She hoped they would miss it when this was all over.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Kate asked.

"Fuck you," Jerry said.

"Where the--who are y--"

Kate rocked forward and punched him in the teeth. He gasped, covering his mouth. His fingers soaked with blood. Best to get the drop on them before they pulled their guns.

His partner swung at Kate, wildly. Kate ducked. His hands fell onto her shoulders, knocking her to the ground.

"Oof," she grunted.

And then his shadow above her was gone. Screaming rang in her ears. She straightened warily.

Renee had Pie in a choke hold. The man gurgling blood had stumbled into a chair, and was just staring at them.

"I found the end of the line. Who pays you?"

Defiance.

Renee squeezed.

Kate put her hand on Jerry's shoulder.

"Ricky pays us, man," he said.

Renee loosened her grip. The man slumped to his knees.

"And who pays Ricky."

This time only a glance from the women got the sitting man to say, "Javier. And then, the Brazilian guy. Martee. Please, man. This is not how I wanted to die."

Kate pointed at the kid. "This is not how he wanted to die, either."

The man's expression hardened.

Renee knelt beside the slumped man. "How did you want to die? That is the question."

"Are you really Batwoman? All the way out here?"

"I'm everywhere."

A whimper.

"Now where's the woman?" Renee asked.

"I don't know. Follow the footprints. My God, you don't have a face."

Renee yanked the hood off the boy and put it over the bleeding man. "Now you don't either. How's it feel?"

Kate tied him to the chair. They tied the slumped man against his back, with the cuffs that bound the kid.

The boy kept his eyes closed and didn't look at them.

"Hey. Kid," Kate said.

He faced her, eyes closed. "I'm just the pool boy," he stammered. "It was just a summer job. I--the pool--"

"I'm going to need you to stay here. Inside where it's warm. You must stay. Do I need to tie you up?"

A shake of the head.

"Are you sure? I will--"

"Batwoman," called Renee, putting her hand on Kate's arm.

Kate studied the boy. He was gaunt. His chin dropped to his chest. His arms hung limply. Whatever fight he'd ever had in him was gone now.

"Sit," Kate said.

He sat.

The women went outside.

"No footprints here," Renee said. She walked up the slope toward the truck, which was parked on the crest.

Kate wanted to tell her to wait. She wanted to hold Renee until all of this faded, until she felt normal. But Renee's mask was on, making her expressionless and inhuman. A mirage. A question mark. Kate followed her into the forest.

The snow had stopped falling, leaving the air crisp and clear and cold. The sky got darker, turning grey without lights to illuminate it. Kate inhaled and then coughed.

"That's an impractical outfit," Renee said.

"Funny, I always thought the same thing about a trench coat and hat. When I'm fighting in the city, the nylon washes the sewer out easily, and keeps knives from slicing too deep. I ran run and jump and have built-in elbow pads."

Renee grunted.

Kate took that as a victory. And she was amused to be following her trench coat-wearing, grunting, formerly-hard-drinking ex-cop lover into the snowy woods. She decided to remember all the feminine things about Renee that she loved. The softness of her neck, arched for a kiss. The way her breasts looked under the shower spray. The taste of her--

Better to think of the vodka and the bad breath and the bullet scars.

Renee murmured, "He will not see me stopping here to watch his woods fill up with snow…"

"Let me guess. Numerology?"

"It was the first poem I memorized in school. I think I was in 5th grade. I ran home and recited it to my parents. They made me translate it into Spanish for them. I was so bad." Renee laughed. "But they loved it. I had to do it with every poem I learned."

Kate wanted to ask what those poems were, but they reached a gully. She had to watch her footing as they descended, downward, to intersect a truck path.

"No footsteps," Renee said. "She must have walked in the tire tracks."

"Smart."

"Inconvenient."

"Want to split up?"

"No," Renee said. She exhaled, her breath white. "Dos caminos divergían en un bosque amarillo."

"And sorry I could not travel both," Kate murmured.

Renee glanced in Kate's direction, and said, "I would go downhill, hoping it would lead me to a road, where I could hitch a ride."

"If you were thinking rationally."

"When do I ever think rationally," Renee said.

"I would go downhill because it's easier, because I could move faster, and put more distance between me and my pursuers."

Renee snapped her fingers.

"It's going to be a long walk back," Kate said.

"And nightfall. We'd better hurry."

They descended.

Renee spotted the hawk as the trees thinned. They followed it until Kate heard a mewing sound. She thought it might be crying. The sound got louder and the hawk closer as they came upon an unfrozen pond--a sinkhole, really, dirty and dark, untouched by the snow.

And the woman.

She was twice the pool boy's age, matronly, Hispanic, and stood in the water, shivering, sobbing.

"Hey," Renee called, in her cop-voice.

Hey, do you know how fast you were going?

Hey, just hold still, the ambulance is on its way.

Hey, we'll get that cat out of the tree, don't worry, but you first, all right?

Kate swallowed and crept closer, looking for signs of injury.

"Are you Batman? I didn't think superheroes were out here. Or girls."

Kate grinned beneath her mask. "Surprise."

"What are you doing in the water?" Renee asked. As if it might be something interesting. As if she wanted to join in.

"I wanted it to numb me. It's so cold. But it hasn't yet."

"Are you hurt?"

The woman shook her head.

"Then why don't you come out?"

The woman looked from Kate to Renee. When her gaze focused on Renee's face, her eyes widened.

Renee pulled off her mask.

"Numb yet?" Kate asked.

The woman shook her head.

"Well, I'm fucking freezing. We have a car. It has a heater."

"What about--" The woman asked, and then stopped.

"The boy? What's his name?"

"I never saw him before."

"He's waiting by the car. We rescued him, too."

The woman looked as if she believed them.

Kate turned and started back into the forest, to give her some space to think.

Renee stood, silent. Like a tree.

Kate heard a splash of water.

* * *

Renee took them to a safe house she knew about. She'd called the local P.D. to report the thugs freezing their balls off in the shack. Then she called Maggie.

"Sure there's not a school for gifted youngsters upstate?" Kate asked.

Renee smirked.

Kate drove the car home without asking, and she took a shower without speaking, and came back into the world--her world, with the carpet her feet sank into, the faint, tantalizing scent of potpourri, the city view just outside her window--in a terrycloth bathrobe that Renee used to love to wear.

Into her world Renee had brought Chinese food. She'd also showered and changed into clothes she'd left long ago at Kate's. She pushed over a cartoon.

Kate picked up chicken with chopsticks. Renee had gotten her Kung Pao. Spicy enough to burn her mouth, clear her sinuses, make her lunge for the water. Spicy enough to make her forget how bad the food actually was. Or how bad the day was.

Renee picked at a tiny carrot.

"You're pensive," Kate said.

"How can you tell?"

Kate pursed her lips.

"I'm thinking," Renee said. "While we were out there, we might have missed something here in the city."

"I said--"

Renee waved a chopstick. "But if we were here, we would have missed those people. Did you see any other heroes around? God, I hate that word. Or cops? Concerned passersby?"

"Renee."

"I just don't think what we're doing anything."

"Maybe when you cut off the head. When you go after Martee."

Renee's eyes narrowed. "I thought you were going to talk me out of that."

Kate put down her chopsticks and went to Renee's side of the island. She put her hands on Renee's shoulders and leaned close.

"Stay," she said. "Don't go anywhere."

"Make you miserable."

"It's not like it was five years ago. It'd be different."

Kate linked her arms around Renee's chest. She pressed her nose to Renee's neck.

Renee took Kate's hand and lifted it to kiss her wrist. She asked, "Was I always this screwed up?"

"I thought that was me. When you got your gold shield, you wanted to celebrate. Remember that fight?"

"Oh, I remember. I thought since I had to wear a damn suit every day I was finally at your level."

"Renee--" It wasn't a denial. Kate had thought a closeted cop would understand. She didn't sleep around. Too much risk of exposure with the wrong stranger.

Every promotion was supposed to bring them closer together. Not give Renee another purpose.

Renee was wincing now with old wounds. "You and your society and your public image."

"The company--"

"Fuck the company."

"And fuck the police?" Kate snapped.

Renee tensed. She squeezed Kate's fingers gently. "You never would follow me too far out of the limelight. Even masked."

Kate gave up and kissed Renee's neck. Renee arched against her lips, deliciously. Kate moved her hands lower. Her heart began to beat harder.

Renee said, "Thanks for giving me a place to come home to. I don't know what it cost you."

Kate moved around to face Renee. "You'll find out."

Renee stood. Kate kissed her, sweetly, briefly. Make her want more. She drew back and took Renee's hand. Renee resisted the tug.

"Come on," Kate said. "You did a good thing today. Don't brood."

"That boy--that woman--they were so normal. They weren't street rats. They weren't evil. They were just--"

"In the wrong place at the wrong time. It happens."

"It shouldn't."

"But it does. That's why they have us."

"But wouldn't we rather be them? I--"

"You're the one that believed in the Batman. You had a good shield and two loving parents and a little tickle on the side. But you trusted him."

"Well, so did my boss," Renee said. But she was following Kate now, letting herself be pulled toward the bedroom.

"He doesn't wear a mask."

In the bedroom, Kate let go of Renee in order to turn down the sheets. Egyptian cotton. High thread count. Controlled lighting. Glass floor-to-ceiling. The only reason at all to have these things was to frame a beautiful woman.

She took in her breath. Renee pulled off her shirt. Kate's hands went to the knot of her bathrobe, but she stilled as Renee pushed off her running pants. She stood before Kate, naked. Kate took in the curve of her neck and shoulder, her breasts, the shadows between her thighs.

"Kate," Renee said. She moved toward Kate.

Kate swallowed.

"You've seen me before."

Renee's damp, dark curls cascaded over her shoulders, Dried, they would frizz into a mane. If they kissed, Kate could tangle her fingers in Renee's hair and keep her close. She could find Renee in any crowd, on any mountain, by her hair alone.

Renee brushed Kate's hands away from her robe and said, "I haven't seen you."

"Give me a couple more years of crime-fighting and I'll have as many sexy scars as you do," Kate said. She traced one by Renee's collar bone, then dropped her arms so Renee could push her robe down.

"You have better armor," Renee said.

"More's the pity."

"Hardly," Renee said.

She kissed Kate's shoulder, and then her neck. Kate tried to hold still, to ignore the rush of blood downward, draining from wherever Renee's lips touched, replaced by tingling and heat. Renee kissed her jaw. Kate closed her eyes.

"Renee."

"I forgot how soft you were," Renee said.

Kate let the compliment wash over her. She knew it was borne of all the women Renee had been with, that she was a woman who got what she wanted, could ask with just her eyes. She didn't care. Renee was with her now. That was almost like forever.

Renee pulled her to the bed. They sat on the edge and kissed. Kate wanted to spend hours exploring Renee's mouth, re-familiarizing herself with Renee's tongue and teeth and lips, but Renee's hand on her breast coaxed her into lying back. Renee kissed her forehead. She knelt over Kate, her knee between Kate's thighs. Kate pushed down. It could be over, quickly. One or two satisfying, straining twists, after a day in the snow--

Renee was moving down, kissing her chest. Kate buried her hands in Renee's hair. "Renee," she pleaded.

"Something wrong?" Renee asked, before taking the tip of Kate's breast in her mouth.

Kate shook her head, and then gasped as Renee's tongue brushed her already taut nipple. The sucking would undo her. Renee's hair spilled onto her other breast. The rest of Kate felt as wet and swollen as her nipple.

She freed her hands to clutch Renee's shoulders, reveling in the smooth skin beneath her fingers. Renee released her breast. She groaned, and then clutched Renee's head as Renee moved lower. Her mouth, delicate and warm, kissed paths across her stomach from hip to hip, from breastbone to belly button.

Kate groaned and spread her legs. Renee chuckled against Kate's stomach, and then nuzzled her thigh.

"Close your eyes," Renee said.

Kate closed them.

Renee kissed her. Her shoulders bumped Kate's thighs. Her tongue moved against Kate, and then dipped into her, and then slipped out, leaving her empty even as Renee soothed the places that ached for her. When Renee repeated her tracing, the anticipation of the light, flicking touches made Kate shudder. She pulled Renee's hair. She begged.

Then a finger touched her--two fingers. She opened herself up to all of Renee's talents working in concert, filling her, kissing her. She groped and Renee's free hand linked with hers. She covered her face with her hand, shivering, and came.

"Oh, God."

The orgasm started where Renee's lips touched her and radiated out like an earthquake, leaving her panting and collapsed and broken. She squeezed her eyes shut. Renee's kisses on her thighs and her stomach, as gentle as silk, burned her skin.

"Stop," she pleaded, when she found the breath.

Then Renee was holding her, curled into her body, breast to breast. Renee dangled one leg over hers. Their calves slid together. Kate gathered the strength to put her arms around Renee's back. She scratched, without being asked, and Renee purred against her cheek.

"Never been the same since that guy knifed me," Renee murmured.

Kate traced the line of the scar. Her other hand moved to the swell of Renee's hip, then to her ass.

Renee brushed hair away from Kate's face.

Kate thought of all the things she had to say, all the questions she wanted to ask. But Renee owned all the questions now. When do you leave? When do you come back? She chased those away, knowing she wouldn't like the answers. Renee wouldn't like telling her, or lying, or keeping silent.

If you love something and you set it free…

"Tell me," Kate said, shifting and then rolling onto Renee.

Renee's smile was lazy. Her hips, rolling against Kate's abdomen, were less lazy.

"All those one night stands… All those girls in the dark where I won't go…"

Kate slid her hand between their bodies. Renee's expression grew tense. Renee's eyes didn't leave hers.

"Did they know about this spot?" Kate curled her fingers.

Renee's expression dissolved into pleasure. Her head back fell against the pillow.

"Did they know the exact amount of pressure that would make you--"

Renee moaned and pulled Kate closer.

"--Do that."

Kate kissed Renee, moving her fingers in time with her tongue's thrusts into Renee's mouth. They were met by Renee's tongue, a token resistance, Renee, pretending to be too much stone to dissolve from a debutante's caress. Then Renee surrendered. Kate's kisses deepened.

They moved together, thrusting, torso to torso, until Renee broke the kiss, panting.

Kate was free to whisper as her fingers pressed, "Do those girls you get so aggressive with know you like being on your back?"

Renee bit her lip, and then hissed as Kate kissed her ear.

"Can any of them imagine where you are right now?"

"Kate," Renee breathed.

That was all Kate had ever wanted to hear. She pressed and coaxed and kissed until Renee's ragged breathing became a scream. Kate held her until Renee twisted away, sobbing.

"I'm here," Kate said.

Renee's back was rigid but she let Kate embrace her, and Kate whispered meaningless things about mercy, forgiveness, and love.

Later, they made love again, taking their time. Re-learning one another. Finally spent, sat in the kitchen, half-clothed, eating cold Chinese food and gossiping. Their city and their past came alive between them.

When Kate woke up Renee was gone. On her pillow was a note.

"I have to find the answer."

Kate spent the morning in her library, trying to feel closer to what she had lost. She thought of the snow and opened her father's bound edition of Robert Frost. Dust coated her fingers.

The poem started out like so many of the others. Out in the woods. No hint of Gotham. But it ended with an ache that echoed in Kate's chest.

Ah, when to the heart of man  
Was it ever less than a treason  
To go with the drift of things,  
To yield with a grace to reason,  
And bow and accept the end  
Of a love or a season?"

Kate traced the words with her fingers. Tonight, she would patrol. She would try to forget about the part of her that needed Renee.

Maybe this time, it would work.

END


End file.
